Comedians have complete ‘Comedic License’ which gives them the qualification and freedom to say whatever they want, professors can outright lie and claim it as truth or even hide behind the auspice of opinion, but radio announcers who by nature and industry are premised to be controversial , become targeted by a specific political agenda, and are absolutely ostracized for just speaking in the arena of comedy and opinion. Forgiveness seems no longer to be existential, but has become more a question of the evolution of a culture of prevaricated declaration.
Andrew
Don’t dismiss him
By RACHEL BERNS Colorado Daily Staff
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:53 PM MDT
For the past two years, Professor Ward Churchill has faced an ongoing battle with his employers at CU. Now, almost a year after being recommended for dismissal by former Chancellor Phil DiStefano, powerful scholars from across the nation are speaking out to reverse Churchill’s discharge.
Law Professor Derrick Bell of New York University’s School of Law, Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other prominent professors are involved in this effort and published a letter in the recent edition of the New York Review of Books.
“The New York Review of Books is the most widely read periodical by intellectuals in America and other parts of the world,” said Reggie Dylan on April 2, who worked with Professor Richard Falk in drafting the letter. “(The letter’s) purpose is to draw attention and to make people aware of the gravity of the case and to call on them to do everything they can to challenge the administration.”
In early 2005, Churchill’s Internet-published essay regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks became a source of criticism. In it, he questioned the innocence of many killed that day and caused an outrage. While Interim Chancellor DiStefano supported Churchill’s right to freedom of speech, he publicly condemned the statements made in the essay.
After over a year of review and investigation, the University’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct recommended that Churchill be penalized for repeated acts of “serious research misconduct” in June of 2006. In August of that year, the University of Colorado Student Union (UCSU) passed a resolution supporting the university’s decision to fire Professor Churchill.
Shortly after, scholars from across the country began showing their support for Churchill. Dylan said that the opposition for the case has been kept out of the public eye until recently and that there are a growing number of scholars from around the country who support the reversal of the pending dismissal. The publication of the letter is meant to encourage more people to speak out.
He said that the letter is just the beginning of a new wave of outrage and that newspapers from around the country are asking that copies of the letter be printed in their papers.
The letter states, in part, “The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom. The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismissal of Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member.”
The bigger issue, Dylan claimed, is the way CU President Hank Brown was hired (he recently announced his plans to retire in 2008). He said that Brown, a former Republican senator, is a co-founder of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), which claimed that American universities are the “weak link” in the country’s defense of terrorism. Brown replaced former CU President Elizabeth Hoffman almost immediately after she stated that Churchill’s case resembled McCarthyism.
“Brown is now in a position to decide whether Churchill will be fired,” Dylan said. “He claims he is an honest broker and (that) he hasn’t made a decision. This is an absolute lie. Brown was brought into the university to get rid of Churchill.”
Ken Mcconnellogue, the associate vice president for university relations, said this claim is false. He said that President Brown was brought to the university to do the job of a president and that the notion he was brought to CU for “this one expressed purpose is ridiculous.
“People are free to express their opinions and if they want to do that through a paid advertisement, that’s their prerogative,” Mcconnellogue said in regard to the letter.
Former CU professional research assistant Ernesto Vigil, who was employed with the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA) from 1989-1990, delivered a notarized document consisting of 30 pages about Churchill to Regent Hall in April 2005. According to Colorado Daily archives, Vigil believed the paper proved that Churchill was not an American Indian and that he committed academic fraud on multiple occasions.
“Ward Churchill is a fake and this has been known for a long time,” Vigil told the Colorado Daily in 2005. “This stuff is not new. These aren’t new revelations.”
According to the article, several professors have doubted some of Churchill’s research on Native American history. Professor Fay G. Cohen of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia reported that Churchill plagiarized an essay she wrote about Indian fishing treaty rights.
CU alumnus and director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project, a higher education policy center dedicated to free speech, individual rights and fiscal accountability Jessica Peck Corry authored a report on legal standards for inquiry in the Churchill investigation. In the report, she stated that not only does CU have the legal right to dismiss Professor Churchill, but also the legal responsibility.
“Education is about honoring truth, always and everywhere,” the report states. “Tenure is about keeping your word, a two-way contractual obligation. Hence academic freedom confers no license to lie. By this standard, and nothing less, must all our universities and all their professors be judged.”
She states that in order for the university to withhold its “professional integrity and academic legitimacy,” CU should terminate the Churchill’s position as a tenured professor. Corry acknowledges the professor’s right to the First Amendment, but believes that there are grounds for dismissal due to his actions that concur with the Laws of the Regents provisions for the termination of tenured faculty including “his demonstrable professional incompetence, his neglect of duty, and his flagrant, persistent failure to meet minimum standards of professional integrity.”
“At this point, any defense of Ward Churchill is simply a defense of bad scholarship and bad ethics,” Corry said in an e-mail Wednesday. “While three years have passed since thousands of people across America called for Churchill’s resignation, CU is still trying to fire him at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.”
Many university students and officials continue to stand behind Professor Churchill and believe in the reversal of his dismissal. Throughout the remainder of the week, the Students and Faculty for True Academic Freedom (STAF) will hold numerous local events in support of him.
Contact Rachel Berns about this story at (303) 443-6272, ext. 113, or at editor@coloradodaily.com.
